


CHECKMATE: The inevitable fall of the King

by Khadgarfield



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Anal Sex, Autoerotic Asphyxiation, Blood Nose, Breathplay, Choking, Light Angst, M/M, Masturbation, Mind Control, Mind Reading, Mind Sex, Seduction, age gap, guilty pleasure, nipple sucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:33:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26912191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khadgarfield/pseuds/Khadgarfield
Summary: He remembered the first time he saw him flush, smelled his blood warming, when he met the boy’s eye.You are just a baby, He had thought, making the measured decision to not tell Varian about it. A foolish boy who will grow out of a foolish crush.Funny how things changed like that. He supposed he was the fool, now?
Relationships: Genn Greymane/Anduin Wrynn
Comments: 11
Kudos: 35





	CHECKMATE: The inevitable fall of the King

**Author's Note:**

> I always thought it was cool how priests can do funky mind stuff since their magic is so closely tied to the void. I *may* have taken so liberties but eh.
> 
> It is what it is.

The firelight in the receiving chamber was dying, stygian pools of shadow flooding the corners of the room, but the light in his eyes was brighter than the embers, illuminating the reflection of the board that lay on the table between them. Genn pressed his lips together into a thin line, trying to read anything in his face that might betray him. A twitch. A flicker of emotion. Anything.

It was like trying to see through the stone walls of Gilneas itself. Everything about his countenance was impenetrable. Unsure of himself, Genn moved his queen backwards, closer to his side of the board. Defensive? No, not defensive. Tactical. This was a tactical decision. Anduin didn’t have many pieces left anyway. A bishop. A knight. A Handful of pawns. His queen had been taken off the board an age ago. 

“Are you okay, Genn?” The young king asked, his eyes not moving from the spread in front of him as he calculated his next move. His voice was soft, barely even breaking the silence. “You seem quiet.”

“Moreso than usual?” Genn didn’t really think of himself as a talkative person. “What kind of question is that?”

Anduin smiled, gaze flickering up briefly, and they shared a moment of contact that was over before it even registered. He reached for the black knight in F6, and moved it across the board to G4 – into check, but also directly into the path of Genn’s Rook.

“A genuine one.”

A genuine one. Anduin could be relentless at times. Always pressing him. Challenging him. Asking him questions he didn’t see the point in answering. Genn scowled.

“Perhaps instead of asking silly questions, you should be focusing on the game.”

He removed the offending knight from the board without hesitation. Anduin inhaled deeply, and for a moment Genn thought he saw the light in the chamber bloom for a moment, increasing in intensity and heat as the last log in the fireplace cracked open like a breaking bone.

“Is that so?”

His opponent moved a bishop, which had previously been locked into position by Genn’s rook, directly into line with the white king and out of reach of anything else on the board. There was a moment where Genn couldn’t quite believe it. Surely there was something he could do to get out of this. The queen he had moved previously was still there, but even so Anduin’s bishop lay well out of reach. Genn’s eyes darted to the row of white pieces Anduin had lined up beside him. Two knights. A second rook... Genn’s own bishops were stuck deep in the far side of the board. He had forgotten to make any meaningful use out of them after he had cleared the black Queen from the game.

“Checkmate.” Anduin smiled at him again, and this made the older man bristle. Was there smugness there? Perhaps not. Perhaps Genn was just being sensitive. He didn’t like the thought that he might be losing his sharpness. Then again, he didn’t think he had played any worse than usual tonight. It was very possible that Anduin had simply bested him. Shouldn’t he be proud of his shrewdness?

He knew he should, but Genn was uncomfortable nonetheless. Usually, the boy wasn’t the sort to be duplicitous, but something had been strange with him lately. Genn couldn’t put his finger on it. Things hadn’t been the same since the whole unpleasantness with N’zoth, and whether that was because of the usual mechanisms of time and experience, or if it was something else entirely, he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t even confident there was anything wrong at all.

“Aye,” he relented, letting the thought escape him and refocusing on the present time and place. “So it is.”

He began to put the chessboard back into starting position, and Anduin sat back into his seat with a contented sigh. He reached for the bottle of wine standing next to them on the table.

“Long game,” he mused, watching Genn place the last pieces back into their correct positions on the board. “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to keep you up so late.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Would you like another drink?”

“I would not.”

“Alright.”

Genn had to bite his tongue as Anduin reached for one of the empty glasses next to his pile of chess pieces, and poured himself his fourth drink of the night. It was a slightly a more generous than normal amount, which was his habit. As much as Genn loathed to watch it, he could hardly tell the King of Stormwind and the leader of the Alliance how much he could or could not drink.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Anduin told him, “it’s only wine and I’m going to sleep after this, besides.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Genn replied. “But next time, I will just bring you some water.”

“Next time,” Anduin repeated, downing the wineglass contents in one go. “bring me something a little less sour. If you don’t mind.”

Funnily enough, Genn did mind

The two of them receded into silence.

Genn and Anduin had played together for many nights now, on and off during seasons where they both had been at the Keep. At first, it was supposed to be a distraction – something to do to keep him company, after the impudent boy had played pilgrim at the Broken Shore. Not only that, but Genn had thought that practice in applied strategy would serve him well as a leader. Maybe it did. Maybe he had just appreciated the inconsequential conflict of a game with a friend. Who wouldn’t, given everything that had gone on? Anduin had always been the sort who sought a stable vision of the future, even if that future was just the promise of company every quarter moon night. Perhaps, in the wake of the loss of Varian Wrynn, Genn had wanted that stability as well. It had worked out for both of them in the end.

So what now, though?

Now the Boy King Anduin was surely a man, honed by grief and a war that was finally almost done. Still he did not falter in his desire for permanency, however. Security on a larger scale than a game, for prolonging the peacetime that was upon them and ensuring the safety of his people who were returning to his lands. Did it trouble Genn, that achieving this might mean drifting away from him, and the companionship he offered him? He knew in the depths of his heart that it did. He also knew that perhaps this, like all good things, was due to come to an end.

“I’ll see myself out.” Genn made to stand up, but was stopped half way.

“Hang on a moment,” Anduin moved lithely out from behind the table and over to the fireplace. His silhouette became described by the dying fire, and as he moved across it he was an eclipse. He was a dying star. The orange halo of light exaggerated his slender arms, his delicate shoulders, the creases of a fine linen shirt tailored to fit his waist. He grabbed something from a small chest on the mantel and returned to press it into Genn’s hand. “Before you go. I wanted to give you this. To thank you. For your service to me during…”

The War?

Genn frowned and sunk back into his seat. He accepted the parcel, an object wrapped in tissue paper, and as Anduin stepped back he wondered why he was giving gifts now. Genn _hated_ gifts. Anduin knew that.

“No need for this,” He said, putting it into his pocket without opening it. “But thank you anyway.”

Anduin cocked his head, as if gauging the degree to which Genn was not delighted about it, but he did not reply. For a while, he just stood there in silence. Genn knew he ought to leave, but still, he didn’t. Not only was Anduin standing in the way, he couldn’t shake the sense that there was still something lingering in the air unsaid, holding him in place. From his vantage point in a rickety old chair, the younger man looked almost like he was towering over him, but the slight, elegant figure was still a far cry from the robust, well armored youth that the people of the kingdom might have known.

Sometimes, when it was just the two of them, Genn thought he saw Anduin as a though he was reflected in a warped mirror. A distorted image cast in a rippling pond. The difference always chilled him, made him far too aware of himself and his own muscles and blood and bones. Did Anduin see him differently to how he saw himself? Of course he did. But even at the best of times, Genn tried not to reflect on how he may or may not be perceived by others. He much preferred to think of his flesh as a fortress. His mind was the last kingdom he could call his own. In the moment though, his kingdom was having an uprising - he recalled the feeling of bemusement when he had first realized how things were with the child, back before the Broken Isles and Varian was still with them and Genn hadn’t thought of Anduin at all. He remembered the first time he saw him flush, smelled his blood warming, when he met the boy’s eye.

 _You are just a baby,_ He remembered thinking, when he made the measured decision to not tell Varian about it. _A foolish boy who will grow out of a foolish crush._

Funny how things changed like that. He supposed he was the fool, now?

Genn forced himself to instead recall moments on the battlefields, where Anduin moved like a breath of wind, where his body seemed like a weapon wrought of burning light. Anduin was an avenging angel, dredging the darkest places of Azeroth for the last flickering shards of the holy. But no matter how hard he tried to reframe it, here, in this room, he was still just that child. The image haunted him. Even if being in the presence of this child was like stepping into the blinding heat of the sun.

The heat from the fireplace, in comparison, did not warm him. He raised a hand to push the younger man aside, and pulled himself to his feet.

“I really do need to go,” He insisted.

Anduin’s brow furrowed, and he made a gesture to sweep long bangs off his face and hook it back behind an ear. “I’m not stopping you.”

_Then why am I still here?_

Genn felt a lump rise in his throat, and he tried to think of a word to justify his hesitation. A reason. An understanding.

All he could manage was to repeat.

“I have to go.”

As he went to pass him, Anduin reached out and grabbed his arm. He could feel the warmth of his skin even through his coat.

“… Would it make it easier for you if I requested you didn’t?”

Genn said nothing.

“What if I offered you a different gift? I know you don’t really care for tokens.”

The hand on his arm shifted, from his wrist to his bicep, and with a gentle push Anduin was turning him so they were face to face again. Genn had a higher vantage point, but somehow he _still_ seemed to tower over him… it wasn’t a trick of the light it was just the mood that radiated off of him. So intense. So bizarre.

This was it then, he realized with a cold shiver through his core. Not just the end of a battle of wills, but also the culmination of years of things unspoken. It was a moment Genn had never really thought would happen, yet had been powerless to forestall. Maybe if he had said something then, all those years ago…

But he didn’t.

Anduin had to stand on his toes to kiss him.

It was a soft, chaste kiss. Experimental. It reminded Genn of the feeling of pressing fruit against ones lips before eating it, the scent of his closeness more dizzying than the sensation but still, it made his mouth water. He was just on the verge of taking a bite, when Anduin pulled back a few inches, still on his toes but far enough apart that Genn could see his face in shadows. The light coloured eyes, half lidded. Smooth cheekbones with the faintest hint of freckles. He had thin lips, not at all like the yielding fullness he was familiar with, but still. They had felt so tempting pressed against his own.

“Don’t do that,” Genn breathed shakily, and Anduin’s eyes fluttered, as though Genn had hit him. “You’ve been drinking.”

“You wanted me to.”

“… Did I?”

Barely perceptibly, even from this close, Genn could see that Anduin nodded.

“It’s been on your mind for…”

Days? Months? Longer?

So much for a fortress.

The grip on his upper arm tightened, and Anduin leaned in again, and this kiss was still slow, and soft and measured. Genn let a hand migrate to his long, slim waist.

Was this it? The thing he had been so afraid of?

This time, when Anduin tried to pull away, he followed him and took him back. One kiss became several, which soon became countless. Anduin released his arm, letting his hands slide against Genn’s chest instead. Pressed against his body, the younger man felt delicate. Wonderful. Genn had not known a welcoming embrace for a long time. Thoughts of Mia passed fleetingly through his mind – his love for her was deep and true but her body did not yield to him any longer. Her bed was even more barren than her womb...

He felt the thought disappear as he was halfway through it, as though it were being plucked from his mind like a hair from his head.

“Don’t think of such things,” Anduin murmured against his lips, and Genn knew that whatever he had been contemplating, the other man had taken it from him as easily as he snatching a treat from a child.

 _Get out of my head,_ he thought, with intensity, but he could taste a dangerous little smile and then, suddenly, the thought was gone.

_No._

No what?

“Nothing,”

Anduin spoke aloud, breaking them apart. The faintest smile curled his mouth - A mouth Genn could hardly believe he had tasted. Genn brought his hands up to cup his face.

“We should stop now,” He said, but Anduin was already shaking his head.

“No.”

He couldn’t find the strength to deny him.

Anduin took a few steps backwards, and Genn followed like he was being lead in a dance. The door between the receiving chamber and his bedroom opened under his weight, and as they stepped through the door into a candlelit space Genn felt soft fingers gliding under the lapels of his coat.

“Take it off,”

He did as he was told. The great heavy thing fell to the floor with a fwump, and without its weight on him Genn felt too light, as though he might drift away.

“ _Perfect._ ”

Anduin’s fingers were pulling at the laces on his shirt. His touch was exhilarating, and his body under Genn’s hands was pliant, inviting him in… even begging for him. Genn had forgotten how it felt, to be wanted like this, and it was strange to have forgotten a thing like that but here he was. Old, but not ossified. Experienced but somehow painfully vulnerable.

“How experienced?” Anduin asked him, pressing the tip of his nose against Genn’s and rubbing his body against him so he knows. He _really_ knows.

_I want you so badly._

Anduin’s thought? Or his own?

“Experienced enough.”

“Well,” Anduin laughed gently, succeeding at opening Genn’s shirt and letting his hands skate over his chest in satisfaction. “That makes one of us.”

So why was it that Anduin was the one in control?

He led them to the bed in no great hurry, pulling of his own shirt while Genn touched him, exploring the terrain of a body mostly devoid of scars. What was there was a handful of thin webbing lines where scars may have once been, but they were almost imperceptible. For a moment, he wondered if it was simply his youthfulness, but then the answer occurred to him as if placed there by another mind entirely.

_When have you ever seen a priest with a warriors scars?_

True enough.

Anduin seemed fascinated by his marks, though, the ridges of tissue that curved over his muscles and reminisced on old trauma. His touch left a warmth in its wake, like soft rivers of gold rippling over Genn’s skin, and it lingered on a particularly ugly fissure, one that was older than he was, in a silent question.

_I can take them away if you like?_

Genn shook his head. Anduin smiled in a way that made it very clear he was glad of it. He pressed his mouth against another - a thin jagged line that arched across Genn’s breastbone. His tongue traced the shape of it, and Genn couldn’t help the little sound that came out of him as that mouth sealed sweetly around his left nipple and sucked. The sensation went straight to his dick, and Anduin knew it. When he felt him move away again, he felt a sense of genuine loss. 

“How long since someone did that to your cock?” He asked, and Genn’s heart did a strange thing.

“Don’t ask me that!” he hissed, but his mind had already answered. It had been three years. Maybe four.

“Such a shame,” Blue eyes glimmered as he gave Genn a gentle nudge backwards, and Genn let himself fall against the bed in helpless submission. It was softer than Genn’s bed, with finer linens and covers stuffed with the finest down, and it smelled like him. Genn could feel his presence inside his skull. Like he was feeling around in there and plumbing all the hidden places in his brain. The sensation wasn’t entirely pleasant, but it wasn’t entirely terrible either, and it intensified when the other man leaned over him and pressed their mouths together again, lips parted.

He didn’t mind as much as he should have, in the end. It meant he didn’t have to tell him how he liked it. Or that he wanted him to play with his nipples again. His blond hair, slipping loose from the tie he used to hold it back, fell against Genn’s chest in silky ribbons. His breath, his tongue… it was incredible. And the hand that pressed between Genn’s legs, tracing the outline of his erection through his pants, was leaving him breathless.

“Do you think I can make you cum like this?”

The words tickled against his skin.

“ _No,_ ” Genn lied, as though Anduin couldn’t tell how close he was. How long it had been since he had been touched by anything besides his own hand.

Genn felt a strange little thrill that was not his own, at the thought of touching himself, and Anduin gave a little moan. It occurred to him that the connection between them went two ways - the further Anduin delved into Genn’s mind, and the deeper the link he forged, the more susceptible he was to being seen back. His desires, his pleasure, were all available to be known… and how captivating they were.

Genn tried his best to press back, unaccustomed to flexing his psyche, but fortunately Anduin’s mind ceded as easily as his body did. Clearly this was by his own volition. The sense of pleasure building in Genn’s belly felt different reflected back at him, and the boundaries between his sensation and Anduin’s blurred almost irrevocably. There was no word, exactly, for how intense it was. Shared sensation. Shared breathing. Shared presence. Genn pulled the other body back up to him, so they were pressed together from shoulder to toes, and he was only vaguely aware that they were still wearing trousers. He was still wearing his boots.

“Don’t worry about it,” One of them said – the thought and the voice was shared between them, cycling like the moons cycled around the planet, and like the planet cycled around the sun. “Don’t worry about anything. Just _fuck me_.”

The body rutting against his hips felt like an extension of himself. His hands squeezed between them, seeking frantically to undo his pants. The press of another erection, one that was not his own, felt strange against his abdomen, but his own body shivered in pleasure when he brushed against it. He groaned.

_Touch yourself for me, instead,_

Anduin laughed softly into his mouth, slipping him a memory. A body on this bed, alone, head thrown back in bliss as he explored the beautiful, sacred spaces between his thighs.

_I always do._

The young man propped himself up, sitting over Genn’s hips and bracing himself with one hand against his chest. The other hand slid over his perfect stomach, tracing the soft path of blonde hair that trailed from his navel and lower, to the top of his pants.

The touch crackled through Genn, an immediate sensation as though he had been touching himself. Anduin’s cock was dripping precum onto his belly – it pooled in the furrows of his abdomen, sticky and flowing. Genn watched, mesmerized, as his hand stroked along his length slowly. Agonizingly erotic. Anduin’s lips were parted, his cheeks flushed in arousal, and really it was mercy that Genn didn’t have to touch him. Didn’t have to touch himself. Maybe it would be easier to compartmentalize later, if they did it this way, because he wasn’t sure how he would be able to cope in meetings and daily life remembering the feeling of Anduin’s manhood in his hands.

The thought was taken from him, and he only had a moment to wonder how many other things this man had snatched from the placid surface of his mind since they had met, before that thought was gone, too.

_Concentrate, Genn._

On what?

The only thing that felt real was the body on his legs. The sensation of a caress that was not a caress. A feedback of breath, and of pleasure, and of something deep and delicious and forbidden curling at the root of his spine. The tantalizing promise of release. But was it his, or…

_Mine._

Anduin tilted his hips, wanton and beautiful, and Genn could have watched him do this forever. The way he moved, the sounds he made. Everything about him was radiant. More than radiant. The lines between them blurred even more and the shape in front of him morphed into a reflection of himself lying there – grey eyed, feverish with lust, and wild like the ancient and windswept cliffs of home. He was above and below, witness and witnessed, and it was strange to see himself through someone else’s eyes but also it was hypnotizing.

“You’re just as beautiful as I am,” their voices twisted, a symphony of two in perfect harmony, but breathless. “Your Majesty.”

_You’re just as lonely as me._

But not in this moment.

They were kissing again, fingertips mapping the shifting terrain of bodies in contact, and a shiver passed through them like a shadow passing over a window in the night. The soft gasp of pleasure on Anduin’s lips turned into a groan as Genn rolled him over, struggling to remember where his boundaries lay, pulling his edges tighter around his soul. He could feel Anduin resisting, trying to open him again, trying to keep their borders knitted together with every ounce of strength he could muster. Withstanding the gravity was like pulling himself out of thick mud, clawing for air. He fought with all he had for the concept of self.

“Stop,” Genn murmured against his neck. “I need to do it like this.”

He kneed the young man’s legs open, the places in his mind where Anduin had been felt empty and cold and he ached for the pressure of him again, but now he could feel himself think he could feel himself seething with primal desire. It was deep in him, long repressed and forgotten. He knew where to look for something to make this easier without even needing to ask, and he wondered what other little things he would know now in the wake of communion. Was it the result of psychic cross contamination, or information Anduin had given him on purpose?

There was oil in the draw. He spilled some over his fingers and found no resistance when he pushed the young king open, watching him roll his shoulders deliciously against the pillow and whine. Genn’s hand worked him open like it was instinct, or perhaps another surreptitious knowing, and even though he was tempted to be fast and rough he knew it would be better not to. When it was time to slide himself in, he took it slow, replacing his fingers inch by inch and savoring the way Anduin reached for him needily, rocked his hips in invitation, guided one of his hands to his throat and begged him softly through frantic kisses.

“Choke me _,_ ”

Genn did as he was told. Beneath his fingers, a desperate pulse shifted into an adrenaline hum. The young King’s neck was small enough that Genn could have snapped it with one hand if he wanted. When Genn rolled into him, pulling out and then burying himself inside to the hilt, he tightened his grip and Anduin’s chest shuddered in silenced agony. Maybe agony. Maybe delight.

He did it again, propping himself up on the arm he wasn’t using and aiming himself to strike upwards, against the sensitive place he knew he would find once he got the angle right. He felt the clawing at the edge of his perception, the one that told him Anduin was reaching out and seeking union with his consciousness again, but the thought of feeling his own hand on his throat filled him with cold fear and he pushed against him hard, in warning.

“ _Don’t_ ,”

His hips struck true and beneath him, the body arced in ecstasy, nails digging into Genn’s wrist as he squeezed his throat, suffocating him, stealing his breath away. Genn wondered how much harder he would need to push to really hurt him. He released his grip for a moment, and as soon as the pressure was gone Anduin was gasping air back into his lungs.

“Don’t stop!” He insisted through his breath. His voice was low and broken and frantic. Genn steeled himself, and resumed pressure, and the young man let his head fall back against the pillow. His whole body was quivering. He was hot and decadent and felt achingly good on Genn’s cock. When Genn slid out then slammed himself back in, he made a noise like he was being torn open, unable to cry out because of the weight on his pharynx. Genn felt the sensation pierce him like a knife in his skull. It thrust into his head through the delicate point right where his jaw met his ear and left him gasping. Sweating.

The young king’s ecstasy. The young king’s pain. Climax approaching, and his senses spreading through Genn’s brain like ivy creeping over stone. Too much feeling for his own body, he frantically sought connection and he found it and Genn moaned and the bedframe smacked hard against the stone wall making a sound like lightening cracking the sky.

Genn felt the orgasm move through the body he was fucking in deep, undulating waves. He felt it down his back and in the tips of his fingers and toes, and it was so overwhelming that he had to release his grip on Anduin’s throat. Had to hold himself so he didn’t fall apart. Had to cry out for the lights guidance as he met his own release and the man under him sunk nails into the meat of his hips.

He had never had a tryst even close to this.

He felt like all of his spirit had been exorcised out of him when he collapsed against Anduin, and the young man brought shaky arms to cradle him tight.

“You did so good, Genn,” He murmured. Genn could feel something wet against the side of his face. It tracked down Anduin’s cheeks and chin. Warm tears - volumes and volumes of them. And blood.

“Your nose,” Genn said, panting softly. Anduin nodded.

“It’s fine.”

He turned his face away, bringing a hand up to swipe at the blood dripping from his nose and over his lips. Genn could see the marks his fingers had left on his neck, inches away from his face, and his heart clenched.

“… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt -“

“I wanted you to.” His voice was soft, but commanding. “and I wanted you.”

He paused for a moment. And then.

“Besides. I can fix it in a moment if I choose.”

That was true enough. It didn’t make Genn feel any better though. However good the sex was in the moment, he found he did not feel very good at all in the aftermath. His muscles were aching and the places Anduin had scratched him stung with all the bitterness the kisses they had shared lacked. 

Oh, light have mercy.

Kisses. Genn had kissed him. Many times. He had done more than that. He had… he had fucked him. Harder than he had ever fucked anyone in his life. And he had came…

_Oh no._

When he rolled aside, he felt the stickiness between them. Anduin’s blood itched as it dried on his cheek.

“Want me to fix that?” The young man asked him, looking at the scratches on Genn’s wrist. Genn shook his head.

“I’ll be okay. You really need to do something about…”

Well, everything. He looked like he had been bested in hand to hand combat. His hair was tousled, his throat was bruised. Had he been bleeding the whole time? Why had Genn not noticed? That seemed like something he should have paid more attention to. Did that mean that he had nearly… _killed_ him?

“It’s because of the choking,” Anduin told him gently. Not mind reading, just good old-fashioned reading his face. “I’m not dying imminently, it’s ok.”

“Can you hurry up and make it stop?”

“I don’t want to.” He said simply, sitting upright and pushing his hair back off his face. “I like it. I liked _that._ Did you…”

He paused for a moment, a brief flicker of uncertainty passing over his face.

“Did you not?”

Genn appreciated that he didn’t try to pry the answer out of him using psychic means. The truth was, he didn’t know how to answer that. He knew, if it were not for the burden of guilt on his conscience, his body in this moment might have felt good and heavy with satisfaction. His muscles were throbbing with the ache of relief after so, so long. This knowledge only served to make the guilt worse, and it was more than just the kissing or the fucking or the roughness of his grip. It was Mia. It was Varian. It was himself.

_Anduin Llane Wrynn, beloved King. Pride of the Alliance._

And who was he? The old and bitter king of nothing. Not anymore.

He remembered their chess game. The ease with which he had been bested after so, so long. Genn had put up a fight every time but Anduin? He was relentless. Ceaseless. Formidable in his tenacity and his intellect. And it was only the unrelenting force of nature over centuries that wore down even the most powerful walls.

Genn shook his head a little, pulling himself to his feet and pacing to his coat. It lay where he had cast it, in a heap on the floor. He reached into the pocket, where he had slipped his gift. He unwrapped the tissue with shaking hands, knowing before he even started what he would find.

 _A memory residue?_ he wondered, _Or just… realization._

The gift, of course, was completely empty inside.

**Author's Note:**

> This ship is so underrated it gives me sad T^T


End file.
